Arguing Academic Merit: Meritocracy and the Rhetoric of the Personal Statement

Alvarez, Steven

Journal of Basic Writing, v31 n2 p32-56 Fall 2012

This article presents a pedagogical model for a sequence of first-year composition (FYC) assignments that encourages students' first-hand interpretations as insiders into the workings of educational meritocracy. I focus on how students negotiate the personal statement, an institutionally privileged genre for the discovery and definition of individual differences, characteristics, and aptitudes. I offer a Bourdiesian model of analysis of the rhetorical tactics students use to legitimate their cultural capital as academic merit. The tactics students enact become topoi for their own rhetorical analyses and arguments, which prove significant when competing for institutional resources.